IronDuke’s I-War2 Remake/I-War3

[IronDuke]

This post will be continuously updated to reflect the current progress of the remake.

Below is a color-coded outline of literally everything to-do to complete the playable test. It will be very handy to quickly get an idea of how far the remake is progressing at any given moment. 😉
(BTW, it was way easier to read in Word. Forum brutally murdered my formatting. Now my replacement is all ugly, boo hoo. ;-; )
This will be updated as things are completed or begun, and as I think of new specific tasks.

Red = incomplete
Orange = in progress
Green = completed
Blue = canceled or postponed, usually postponed.
Sub-tasks aren’t colored unless parent task is in progress, for sake of laziness.

– HUD
– – 3-D items
– – – Sensor-contact brackets
– – – Contrails
– – – Targeting lead indicator
– – – Weapon alignment indicator
– – – Shield tracking icons the current shield mechanics don’t permit this yet
– – Contact list
– – – Displayed in window
– – – Scroll up/down
– – – Contains info: IFF, Type, Distance, Name
– – Multi-Function Display
– – – Telescope camera view :3 Not much reason for this to be in a basic combat alpha test, really.
– – – Wireframe-render view
– – – Contains target info
– – – – Target health
– – – – Target IFF
– – – – Target type
– – – – Target name
– – ORB
– – – Sphere comprised of 3 wireframe circles, 1 per axis
– – – Pips on them
– – – Pips placed on stalks representing distance to player
– – – # of contacts
– – Reticle
– – – Base reticle icon
– – – Speed info for player
– – – Speed info for target
– – – Player health
– – – Target health
– – – Target name :V
– – – Target distance
– – – Visibility info
– – – Power info
– – – Heat info
– – – Missile lock
– – – Weapons lock 😉 in a combat alpha test, it can be assumed you are weapon locked
– – – Vector-to-target icon (aka little arrow pointing to target)
– – – Some assorted other icons and HUD elements
– – Weapon/shield/system info
– – – List of weapons – each weapon has:
– – – – Energy in main capacitor OR ammo remaining in magazine
– – – – Time to next shot
– – – – Heat
– – – – Health
– – – – Power
– – – List of shields – each shield has:
– – – – Energy in main capacitor
– – – – Time to next block
– – – – Heat
– – – – Health
– – – – Power
– – – List of systems – each system has:
– – – – Power
– – – – Heat Should be working but not testable yet
– – – – Health
– – Clock
– – – Hey, it’s in EoC! Why not?
– – – Shows time-from-launch
– – – Also shows system time not needed in a combat alpha, really

– Flight model future improvements include thrust ramp-up, thrusters not aligned perfectly with axis, and rotating/otherwise moving thrusters
– – Thrust applied to each individual thruster
– – Potential for each thruster’s power to drop as damaged
– – Fully linked to player controls

– Passive sensors
– – Detects, or detects not. There is no “try.”

– Projectile weapons
– – Light PBC
– – PBC
– – – Literally copy-paste light PBC, alter stats
– – – Special effects effects on the weapon itself not strictly necessary as long as the shot is visible
– – – New 3D model for the gun itself
– – Gatling cannon moved to a later alpha
– – – Literally copy-paste PBC, alter stats/settings
– – – Special effects
– – – New 3D model for the gun itself
– – Turret/gimbal functionality
– – – Target tracking/prediction
– – – Independent, individual, local weapon self-control
– – Weapon forces (physically accurate for mass & velocity(will be applied to missiles & beams))
– – – Force applied to location of gun on firing
– – – Force applied to impact point

– Damage model
– – System health not bothering for initial alpha
– – Main ship health
– – Autorepair systems only works on ship health btw as system health not implemented
– – Armor and penetration mechanics moved to later alpha
– – Weapon scripts not gonna lie, i don’t remember what I meant by this. Hopefully I’ll remember

– Power model postponed to future alphas
– – Powerplant functionality
– – System power drain
– – Accumulator functionality Basically this is a big fat battery.
– – Plasma grid functionality

– Heat model postponed to future alphas
– – System heat functionality
– – Main ship heat functionality system heat drains into here
– – Heatsink functionality basically just drains ship heat

– Missiles
– – Copy scripts (only flight-control)
– – Modify for 3-D space functionality
– – Add splash-damage
– – – Inversely proportional to distance proportional to the square of distance is more correct but causes wildly unpredictable behavior so a linear falloff feels much better. Same goes for force
– – – Affects all objects in blast radius
– – Spoofing functionality
– – Intensely and brutally bug-test and tweak the bug-testing will be done by you guys 🙂
– – Special effects
– – Forces
– – – Force upon launching
– – – Force from explosion, physically accurate for explosive force over distance

– Countermeasures
– – Point-defense turrets
– – – Attacks missiles locked on
– – – Special effects
– – Flares
– – – No flight
– – – Active-jamming spoofs only 1 missile
– – – Special effects
– – ChaffJust a teaser 😉 Not actually implementing this yet

– Command Section
– – Pull model from EoC
– – – Patch holes/reverse geometry from supremely flaky conversion process
– – – Add to Unity project
– – Flight model
– – – Add all thrusters and stuff
– – – Balance specs to match EoC I’m not going to perfectly match EoC, as the comsec is not balanced to begin with.
– – – Special effects
– – Assemble prefabs for player and AI
– – – Player ship
– – – AI ship NPC vessels will be puffins; no need for comsecs
– – Ship death special effects
– – Detach function
– – – Docking and undocking
– – – Swapping control to and from parent ship

– Heavy Corvette
– – Pull model from EoC
– – – Patch holes/reverse geometry from conversion process
– – – Add to Unity project
– – Flight model
– – – Add all thrusters and stuff
– – – Balance specs to match EoC Again, not perfectly matching due to improper balance to begin with.
– – – Special effects
– – Assemble prefabs for player & AI
– – – Player ship
– – – AI ships NPC ships will be puffins
– – Ship death special effects

– Basic NPC AI
– – Puffin Tug setup
– – Just flies about, occasionally flanking, tries to stay facing
– – Utilizes all weapons

– Spawning algorithm
– – Copy over and modify for 3-D space

– SHIELDS! Surprise!
– – Just lots of coding.
– – – Calculates capacitor energy consumption on hit based on shield efficiency, shot mass, and relative velocity
– – – Field hold time (time to next block) based on energy consumption relative to max consumption
– – – Able to shield vessels parented to shielding vessel, will be dependent on relative size
– – Special effects effects are very simple at the moment but recognizable

– Camera shake
– – Pitch & Yaw shake (aka 1)
– – Translational shake (aka 2)
– – Shakes caused by:
– – – Explosions/engine-wash (1 & 2)
– – – Thruster G-forces
– – – Impacts (1 & 2)
– – – Anything vibrating (1)

– Music

– All sound effects
– – Engine sounds
– – Weapon sounds
– – Shield, docking, and collision sounds
– – HUD sounds
– – Other sounds

– Controls
– – Controller ID swapper
– – – The boring kind of coding. Woot.
– – Full controls on keyboard, joystick, and K&M 😉

– Build test

– Write up documentation/help

– Upload test

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[Chessking]

Yahoo!

-armor. In I-War 1, the entire hull acts as one piece, and has its own health bar. It acts as the actual damage level, while subsystem damage merely affects performance. I think this would change, although it would be difficult. A ship without a hull wouldn’t be space-worthy, so perhaps some armor pieces are more important than others, and destroying the more important armor pieces on an enemy ship could eliminate it. I suggest making the game with a “dynamic hull” in mind, but not implementing it until more important things are out of the way.

-thrusters. Good question. A force-applying system would certainly be more realistic, but like you said, how would that affect other ships? However, after implementing realistic collisions, a force-based thruster system would be quite easy to add.

-Regarding Caleb Maas: Personally, I too am disappointed when characters who were supposed to be dead are brought back into the story. Besides. [spoiler]Maas was infected by the aliens. If he doesn’t die right away, the Badlands cluster will be infected, and the entire fight against the aliens would have been pointless.[/spoiler] Pretty soon (Maybe even tomorrow) I plan on starting a discussion about what would happen after the end of the story. Perhaps we can search for some other options then.

-Walking on ships. The physics and camera movements for FPS games are much simpler than those for space simulators. I think this is a must for this expansion to be a drastic and exiting improvement over the last game. For a long time I have dreamed about being able to walk through Lucretia’s base, crawl down the UDC into my Storm Petrel, and take a seat at the pilots chair. Also, I doubt you would have to render both the insides and the outsides of a ship at the same time, so they would not have to match up perfectly. Because of this, building the interior models for the ships could be the easiest job for other non-coders to help out.

-Planetary Landings. I would be perfectly content with either walking on ships or planetary landings. You could put off one or the other until later.

I think you should aim for an improvement rather than a replication of the vanilla game. After all, this is nearly the only hope for the continuation for the series.

Also, I would really like to see the ability to command other ships added to the game, adding an RTS side to the game. It would allow you to advance in rank beyond Ship Captain.

Please, please, please say you need some backgrounds generated for the game! I am ready! If you want help with anything else, let me know. In the meantime, I guess I had better re-install Unity.

---

This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

Storm Petrel

[IronDuke]

-Mostly I’m looking for more realism in the armor because I thought it was silly that you could get a ship down to 1% health by hitting one side only, then fly to the other side and one-shot it with a light PBC. Just silly. 😛 I’m not sure yet what system I would implement instead, since I’m first deciding whether or not to do so.
-I already have a force-applying system. And I suppose you haven’t used Unity for a while. Create gameobject. Add rigidbody. Add collider. Bang. You have an object that moves around and reacts to collisions in a realistic way. Yay for PhysX integration! 😆
-Mostly I had wanted to leave him alive since I really really hated him and wanted to get to beat the living donkeyfetters out of him personally. B) Besides, who said he’d be in the Badlands? I do see your point though.
-I might have to render the insides and outsides at the same time if someone pokes a hole in the ship. I’ve been considering how to do that already. I also have dreamed of having to squeeze through access hatches and stuff, so this is something I want as well. You should realize though that the reason why the physics and camera movements are simpler for FPS games is because they are not factoring in a third dimension, nor zero gravity. Might be a fun challenge to implement. 🙂
-Planetary landings, if implemented, would most certainly be done after the FPS section, if that is implemented. Reason is that I-War2 is about you and your ship. Being able to walk around your ship and Lucretia’s Base would be more personal an experience than landing the ship on a planet, although that’s pretty cool too.
-I like the idea of improving on the base game, obviously, but I didn’t want to rouse the kind of complaints that the System Shock remake has been getting. Long-time fans of that series have complained that the developers aren’t being faithful to what made the original game have its own style, implementing new gameplay features and removing others. I doubt that’ll be too much of an issue for me, but I want to tread carefully.
-Just so you know, you do get wingmen in some missions in the regular game. 😛 But yes, I was planning to have the ability to build up and command a small fleet and give them orders. :cheer:
-Finally, ze backgrounds. I was originally planning to use the Space Engine “export skybox” feature, but if you can make backgrounds that look better and/or are more fitting to the I-War universe, I’ll take those.

I just want to make a mention that the version of Unity I’m using right now is 5.3.4f1. 5.4 came out yesterday, but I’m not upgrading as it has no features or bugfixes that I need, and upgrading can break existing projects, of which I have many. So if you install Unity to help out, you might want to use the same version as I to ensure compatibility.

Anyone else want to chime in and offer opinions? (Probably they have to make their monthly login or whatever. 😆 )

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[7upMan]

My only comment is that I wish you the spare time and sheer will to really pull this off. You also might want to consider Kickstarter if you have something to show and decide to follow a career as a game dev. I just helped fund the System Shock remake, and I know that we are both Limit Theory backers.

I wish you the best of luck!

[IronDuke]

Thanks man. :cheer: I won’t do a kickstarter, as this needs to be an entirely free project, since Atari owns a lot of rights regarding the name Independence War, and owns the game files and everything. But one day I might make use of Kickstarter for another project. Depends on how things go.
Also, I should mention that I did not back Limit Theory. Two reasons exist. Not enough money, and I didn’t even hear of the project until 2014. So I’m only a backer in spirit. 😉

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[admin]

Wow. Sounds like a massive amount of work for just one person.

I’m looking forward to this. 🙂

---

Space. The final frontier.

[Chessking]

– The armor situation reminds me of the MMO tank games “World of Tanks” and “War Thunder”. World of Tanks has seperate armor values for the front, sides, and rear of the tank. War Thunder has separate armor thicknesses for each plate of armor. As a result, shot placement in War Thunder is much more strategic than in World of Tanks.
– I suggest adding the force-applying system, but hacking it to apply the same forces as usual. Part of I-War’s style is strafing around a target while shooting at it, and a proper force system would make your ship maneuver terribly, upsetting this feature. If we add new ships, we could design them with engine thrusters in the the front and sides, so that they would maneuver properly even with realistic thrust values.
–

Besides, who said he’d be in the Badlands?

According to Torn Stars, a failed jump will either destroy your ship, or leave you stranded somewhere in between with heavy damage. I don’t think he could survive being infected by aliens 200 lightyears from the nearest living person, in a damaged ship with no supplies. I think it is best to leave him be, as the original developers likely intended.

-The Space Engine skyboxes look good, but I don’t know if you could make skyboxes to match the original style of the game. Each system in the Badlands has a distinct color to it. I suggest implementing the Space Engine skybox first, while I improve my generators until you are satisfied with the results. Also, I have an idea about how Space Engine skyboxes work. The algorithm I used to place metal slabs on the Biobomber can be modified to produce seeds for each stars. These seeds can be run through some algorithms to produce the size, color, and type of star. And in Space Engine, it would also generate the position number of planets, atmosphere type, etc. This would allow you to fly to each star in the sky.

Remember when I deleted all my data that one time? And had to rewrite EOC 2-D? Well, I also deleted the generators I had been using to produce images with algorithms. Just yesterday, though, before I found your post, I re-wrote it to be even better. The old generators were a muddy gray of messed up code and inefficient processes. This one is a crisp white color. Attached is the output of the generator, totaling less than 100 lines of code. The algorithm for the orange part is return abs(tan(map(sin(map(tan(seed), 0, 5, 0, 255)*sin(1)-asin(1))*x/y, 0, 1, 0, 255))); The algorithm for the blue portion is return tan((seed*sin(x+4000))*(seed*sin(y)));

I didn’t hear about Limit Theory until 2015.

Yay! Schmatzler! It has been a while since you posted.

Attachments:

• 

---

This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

Storm Petrel

[admin]

[quote=”Chessking” post=20284]Yay! Schmatzler! It has been a while since you posted.[/quote]
I’m always watching, but my time is very limited. But don’t worry, I’ll keep everything running here. B)

---

Space. The final frontier.

[IronDuke]

“Always watching” he says…
*hides candy*
Nope. Didn’t take more than allowed. Nuh uh. :whistle:

Chessking, that is a great background! The main advantage it would pose is that it would always be max quality, right? The problem with a skybox from Space Engine is that it could get really blurry if you have a really high resolution screen, or zoom in with a sniper view. Yours, assuming I’m thinking correctly and haven’t let the sandwiches go to my head again, would always be pixel perfect. I can’t be too sure; I have no idea how that code works. 😆 Looks like an unholy pile of math, the only aspect of coding I stink at.

As regards Maas, I think I’ll just leave him out then. I did have a whopping huge explanation thing involving alien preservation, an undiscovered system halfway between the clusters, and some very evil collaboration. But I guess that’ll have to be trashed.

For armor, I really like the War Thunder system, but the thing with a spaceship of the design in I-War2 could in fact be destroyed by taking out enough of the hull. WT does not have the ability to reduce armor coverage, although that’d not be too hard to implement. A “dynamic” hull is almost certainly necessary to keep I-War2 feeling like a space sim. I’m just unsure yet exactly what method of several I’ve conceived of to implement.

Thrusters on the sides and front? Yeah, seems I forgot to mention that the system I have allows for a literally infinite number of thrusters distributed between all six degrees of freedom. 👿 Not only that, but because of the way I coded it, you can easily position the thrusters to ensure the center of thrust matches the center of mass. This means that you can twist the joysticks like mad, and it’ll behave in a manner almost exactly the same as I-War2. The difference is that there is a slight tremble/feel/dunnowhat that makes you feel like the thrusters are truly pushing the ship about. Somehow, ED also got this, but vanilla EOC lacks it. EOC feels like the ship accelerates, but not by being pushed by the thrusters. In addition, the float for input can be instantly replaced by a float calculated by an AI. This means that an AI vessel could use literally the EXACT SAME flight model as the player. It’d be really easy to code, too.
Every thruster can have its own multiplier value for perfect customization of how much force it applies, but I’m planning on expanding the system to use these factors instead:
-Time spent by the mass in the thruster. This depends on how fast the EM coils can accelerate it, which will use real-world equations to calculate.
-Amount of mass being ejected. This depends on the thruster’s dimensions.
-Power running through the EM coils. This way the ship’s engineer can simply crank a dial to 0.8 and the thruster’s power consumption instantly drops to 80%, as well as the actual thrust provided.
These would merely be additional numbers to factor in, so that’d be trivial.
The biggest problem with this system is that, while a visual component is not required for operation, it really REALLY aids the feeling of being pushed through space. Very few of the I-War2 ships were designed in a way permitting even reverse thrusters, let alone lateral thrusters. We’d have to add those ourselves when remodelling the ships, so they wouldn’t look exactly the same as in the vanilla game.

I’m adding a new question to the list right after I make this post. 🙂

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[IronDuke]

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! This forum has no edit button! :blink: 😐

Wait, posts I made today do… this is weird.

Ah, thanks Schmatzler! o7 Wouldn’t want to be seeing horrible edit-necros performed by druid dinosaurs… :silly:

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[admin]

There was a timelimit for editing posts, so you couldn’t edit posts from billions of years ago.

I removed it for now.

---

Space. The final frontier.

[Chessking]

My EOC 2-D thruster system is already the same as yours, except for a few things. I can’t add as many thrusters as I want, and I can’t change the force of thrusters of the same type. The engine thruster has its own section to store its attributes, including how to draw it. The air thrusters only store the positions, and are all treated the same way. The AI handles the ship the same way the player does, by manipulating which thrusters are on and when. I also do not use a force system tied to each thruster. The force is applied to the ship, and then the thrusters that should create that force are drawn. I plan on modifying my system so I can add more thrusters.

He’s dead, Jim.

You couldn’t have said it better. 😆

Regarding my textures, they will get blurry if you zoom in enough. The file I uploaded is 1000×1000*11/8.5 (100×1295) resolution, designed to fill an 8.5×11″ page. I can generate textures of any size for you, so yes, there is an advantage.

In fact, here is a 5000×5000 pixel starfield for you. Still less than 100 lines of code, and completely procedural. I could not attach it because of its large file size, but here is a Dropbox link.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0vku47ncex7q2sg/Ultimate%20Starfield%20Gradient.png?dl=0

---

This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

Storm Petrel

[IronDuke]

Ohhhhhh, I thought you’re starfield system was generated at runtime like the pixel stars currently in the base game. Because that would be sweet. *hint hint*

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[Chessking]

The current method runs the algorithm on every pixel of the canvas, which takes a long time. My program runs the algorithm and saves the result in an image, which can be displayed at runtime. When I implement my star-based generation, every time the algorithm is run a new star will be created. These should be able to be generated at runtime, although it wouldn’t matter if they are built into the image. For Space Engine, you can see the stars fly past while flying at high speeds, so generating in runtime is essential. In my generator, special stars will draw a flare over the generated position, coloring and scaling the flare in accordance to generated values.

---

This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

Storm Petrel

[IronDuke]

I’ve decided what kind of damage model to implement. Seems to have taken me a whole week to work out. 😮

Imagine the War Thunder armor viewer. Increase the number of armor segments by five to get a typical corvette’s armor layout. The internal systems will also be modelled with their own colliders, just like the various systems in a War Thunder tank. A key difference, however, is a large internal structure unintuitively named “Internal Structure” that sprawls through the middle of the ship. It’s basically the same as any other system, except that it has one function. When its health reaches 0, ship = boom. Another difference is that while the armor in WT cannot be destroyed, the armor in my system has a health value. The following paragraphs describe why.

So take a normal PBC shot. When it hits a ship, the angle of impact, the shot’s damage – decrease over distance, and the penetration are examples of factors taken into account. First, there’s a simple penetration check. Armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle are used, as well as the shot’s penetration and speed. The armor type, thickness, health, and hit angle will produce a “resistance” variable. The shot’s penetration and speed will produce a second “penetration” variable. A comparison of these two numbers will follow. If “penetration” is more than 50% (this might get tweaked some) greater than “resistance,” a full penetration occurs. The shot passes straight through the armor. Only a slight amount of damage is inflicted to the armor chunk, with the rest staying on the shot. If “penetration” is between 50% less than and 50% greater than “resistance,” a partial penetration occurs. Say it’s 10% lower than “resistance.” This would make a 40% penetration, so 60% of the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk, and 40% passes through on the shot. Now if “penetration” is less than 50% of “resistance,” then it’s a no-penetration. All the damage is inflicted on the armor chunk.

So what happens as the armor chunk’s health goes down? That affects “resistance,” as I mentioned that the armor health is a factor. I think I’ll simply have it be a multiplier to “resistance,” with 100% health being a 1.0 factor, and 0% health being a 0 factor.

Now what happens when a shot penetrates? As in WT, there are many systems in the ship. Whichever system the shot crosses will receive the damage, with another penetration check – not to see if the shot should go through, but to see how much damage it will do to the system, to allow some weapons to be better disablers. Nice and simple. In fact, if a shot has enough penetration and damage to go straight through the armor chunk, hit a system and bring its health to 0, then it will continue on, hit an armor chunk on the other side, run another penetration check, and if it passes, then go straight through and keep flying. MESON CANNONS ANYBODY?? 👿 Also, I’ll implement the ability for some shots to have an area of effect. Yup, antimatter PBCs will damage multiple systems easily.

Now how about beams and missiles? Beams will operate the same way. Missiles will be similar, the difference being that instead of tracing a line on their impact path to determine what they hit on a penetration, everything within a certain radius of the missile (the blast radius) is damaged.

There are several advantages with this system. First, it allows for tactical gameplay, making it wise to aim for sections of a ship that have already been hit. Also, it makes the game more realistic, which is a good thing, of course. It also allows for a very wide variety of weapon specialties, with some good against lightly armored ships, others against heavy armor. And finally, while the system in the vanilla EoC would take barely an hour to program, this one is not too hard either. It’s simple math.

Let me know what you think of it!

–IronDuke

---

I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂

[Author]

Posts